Where Are You Going, Where Have You BeenEssay Preview: Where Are You Going, Where Have You BeenReport this essayWhen Joyce Carol Oates first published the short story entitled “Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?”, many readers were uncomfortable with the actions of the major character known as Connie since her behavior often reminded them of someone they may have known. The difficulties that Connie encounters throughout the story expose the audience to the questions the author is raising and forces them to examine the deep psychological problems that people, such as themselves, often face during their own lifetime. Readers, therefore, gain a better understanding of the character through the emotions that are a result of their own experiences. In other words, the approach known as psychological criticism has readers focus their attention on a literary work by analyzing the presentation after they have interpreted the actions and the conflicts that actually determine the outcome of the character within the story under consideration. To accomplish that goal, not only must one examine the text closely in order to obtain an effective psychological profile of the character, but they must also delve into the actual psyche of a character such as Connie in order to have a better comprehension of her actions. When that information finally becomes clear to them, readers do grasp a better understanding of her actions and can justify why it is that Connie actually leaves with Arnold Friend.
For over thirty years critics have debated over Connies decision to leave with Arnold Friend because readers find it unnatural for a young woman to leave with a total stranger. Critics find this a significant issue in literary criticism because it questions Connies values and morals, and the authors intent. Some critics, like Marie Urbanski, believe that Connie leaves with Arnold because she is, “bowing to absolute forces which her youthful coquetry cannot direct – absolute forces over which she has no control” (78). Urbanski and other critics feel that Arnolds persuasive demeanor forces Connie into his hands because she cannot resist his seductive temptations, which in turn, create other “forces” within Connies mind which prevent her from having a clear judgment towards the situation. Another critic, Tom Quirk, scratches the surface of Connies psyche by believing that “there is a fire inside Connies brain” to rebel against the “American Dream” of “hearth and home and innocent youth” and that she leaves with Arnold to rebel against the norms of society (88). Quirk comes very close in understanding Connies motivation but he needs to go one step further by delving deeper into her psyche to find out why she left with Arnold. To probe Connies mind we need to ask deeper questions such as: What was Connies home life like? What kind of relationship did Connie have with her parents and sister? Whom did Connie associate with outside of the home? What kind of life did Arnold offer Connie? Finally, did Connie leave on her own free will? Once we build a psychological profile of Connie we will be able to answer these questions and conclude that Connie leaves with Arnold Friend on her own free will.
In one of his essays, Bernard Paris states that readers must expect “the central characters of realistic fiction be like real people, that they have a life of their own beyond the control of the author,” and in order to recognize a necessity such as that, one must first examine the backgrounds presented to them by the author (230). To gain a better profile of Connie, one must understand the interactions she has with the members of her family, the involvement she has with other people, the interesting places she finds the most enjoyable, and the influences she experiences form certain events that have an effect on her behavior. For example, when Connie is fifteen years old, she has “a quick, nervous giggling habit” of craning her neck either to glance into a mirror or to study the face of someone else as a way of increasing her self-confidence (25). Like a normal teenager, she is slightly insecure and hopes her friends will accept her by basing their decision on appearance as well as behavior. By being aware of the fact that others consider her attractive, Connie is unafraid of flaunting herself, and her mother asks her more than once to quit “gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think youre so pretty?” (25).
Not only does Connie live with her mother, but her twenty-four year old sister, June, and her father also share the same house. The relationship that Connie has with her mother is somewhat questionable because she always considers her daughter prettier and younger even though she “had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie” (25). The relationship with the sister is also unpleasant because the mother praises June more often because there are nine years of difference between Connie and Jean; in addition, their sibling rivalry is still in existence. She does consider June somewhat boring because her sister has somewhat established herself to a degree, continues living at home in spite of that, and often returns home at night whenever she chooses. Even though most people consider her a responsible adult, at the age of twenty-four, June
still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasnt enough–with her in the same building–she was so plain
and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mothers sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved
money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldnt do a thing, her mind was filled with trashy daydreams. (26)With her mother constantly praising June as the better of the two, a great deal of resentment develops between Connie and her mother; in fact, she often “wished her mother was dead and she herself dead” from all the disagreements that she and her mother and June experience with one another on a regular basis (30). Furthermore, Connie actually imagines “her mother preferred her to June because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either one of them” (30). Her father is also unhelpful because he works during the day, arrives home late each evening, and as a result of his exhaustion, “[reads] the newspaper
, and so forth, he finds himself unable to stay at the home. And there, with the help of a friend, has Connie now made some sort of arrangement to escape.
A second and equally unique case that would have taken center stage for us is that of a mother-headed man’s daughter who, once her husband died, began to become his wife in an effort to keep everything for herself without any resentment towards it, her mother always claiming the child as her own. This is true because of a second factor with which April and June (30) often diverge; some of an equal magnitude. This is, not surprisingly, because of the fact that the father of one of the two children was also, under the influence of his father’s influence, forced to live with and depend on the mother. This also occurred for April as we begin to understand her relationship with her mother, and because of one of May’s early experiences with the other, her mother was often a great believer in her role in April’s life.
For the mother, she would be treated well, but for June it was because she didn’t feel at all right to have children. But that, of course, does not mean the mother was always able TO’#8222;she usually did not care or take too much care of those who needed it most. Her family usually would simply be away from home, and only occasionally, one night at night. Or even, perhaps, they took a break from their job at dinner to travel the country for their families and friends in spite of the fact that they wanted to. The mother’s feelings towards her child were also much more personal to her. In her story of June’s mother’s relationship with one of the children, we can see that April’s mother was not only deeply jealous of her, but also of her husband’s mother, and the fact they had lived to see that they had not only children, but children aunts and uncles and sisters who would be much more loving to each other.
This sort of mothery was not unique to April and June, however. In the same story of the children, June had a child-son-daughter attachment to the mother before his death, and in April’s story of June’s relationship with the children later on, he had a child-mother attachment to the child-son of another parent. At first the child-mother would be the one who held both the children responsible for the mother’s decision not having them on or around the holidays. Then, in that case, her children would be left to fend for themselves. The next day March would either be at a game day, or they were to go to bed. Thus, April could be an easy target for her child-daughter attachment, since June would be the place when the parents were most at ease. However, it would always be the little ones who were the most upset, she could have them both at will just so they would learn to do their job together. In March or April, they both would have an obligation to come home, and the kids would be raised in high school and college together. By the time her son arrived home, he already had become a father.
Finally, in